Divine Marriage Divine Marriage Born Again
By John and Claire Grabowski
John Grabowski is an Associate Professor and the Director of Moral Theology and Ethics at The Catholic University of America. John and his wife, Claire, were appointed as a Member Couple to the Pontifical Council for the Family by Pope Benedict Xvi in 2009. They accept been married since 1985 and are the authors of One Body: A Program of Spousal relationship Preparation and Enrichment for the New Evangelization.
In their wedding vows, a homo and woman make a souvenir of themselves to each other. They promise fidelity and the whole of who they are as persons. This mutual gift so becomes the basis of the whole of their life together—their communion of beloved. This souvenir is remembered and expressed in a unique fashion in the bodily language spoken in sexual intercourse.
This is 1 reason why the prophets of the Old Testament could compare Israel's worship of other gods as a form of adultery or "playing the harlot." The covenant between State of israel and God was also marital. Information technology was rooted in promises of full fidelity expressed in the worship of only Yahweh. Under the influence of this cracking sign at the heart of their lives, the people of Israel came to understand the necessity of fidelity within the covenant of marriage. As Pope Benedict 16 says, "Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage." But the people of Israel likewise came to realize God'southward tender and passionate love for them. God is like a hubby who passionately pursues and tenderly loves his bride, fifty-fifty when she was not faithful to him. This revelation of God'southward passionate love for us culminates in Christ the Bridegroom laying down His life for His Bride, the Church. In His human activity of dear, sacrificial cocky-gift (agapē) and passionate desire for union (eros) are completely interwoven. This is the intimate love that we receive in the Eucharist.
This is the divine beloved at the heart of Christian marriage. Christian marriage is a covenant, only it is more than this. It is more a covenant uniting a man and woman before God. Information technology is more than a sign of God's marital union with His people in the Old and New Covenants. It is also a participation in the union between Christ and the Church building that communicates God's transforming life and love. That is, it is a sacrament. Sacraments are efficacious signs. They not merely are symbols of holy things; they communicate grace (God's own uncreated life) to us.
Corresponding to the oath of the marriage covenant is the couple'due south expression of consent in their hymeneals vows. A couple makes a free and conscious choice to demark themselves to one some other in the midst of the Christian community. They promise to exist faithful to ane another and to dearest and honor 1 another for the whole of their lives. In so doing, they brand a souvenir of themselves to each other. This souvenir includes the whole of who they are every bit a man and a adult female which includes their fertility—their capacity to cooperate with God in bringing children into the earth. Therefore, consent is ordered to and expressed in sexual consummation—the sign or gesture that fully enacts this covenant hope. The "language of the body" spoken in marital sexual practice, therefore, is a recollection and an enactment of their vows to each other. This does not mean that every fourth dimension a couple has intercourse they mystically relive their wedding vows. It means that giving themselves to each other sexually—whether they are tired or energetic, broken-hearted or blithesome, aware of its full meaning or non—expresses in a bodily mode the promises that united them as hubby and wife.
In the understanding of the Western Church building, it is the couple themselves in virtue of their baptism who confer the sacrament on each other. Pope John Paul II says of the substitution of vows: "With these words the engaged couple contract matrimony, and at the aforementioned fourth dimension they receive it as a sacrament of which they are both ministers. Both, the man and the woman, administer the sacrament. They practice then earlier witnesses. The authorized witness is the priest, who at the same time blesses the marriage and presides over the whole liturgy of the sacrament." The priest more often than not must be there along with other witnesses (usually two), only, in some sense, he is expendable. Christ acts in and through the couple to unite them before the Church customs.
When a couple is joined in spousal relationship, a bond is created that gives them a new identity equally married man and married woman. This bond becomes an ongoing source of God'due south grace to sustain and empower the couple over the whole of their life together. Information technology is vital that couples seek to practice and deepen their faith so that they tin can consciously draw upon the grace of the sacrament in facing the joys and challenges of married life together. Sacramental spousal relationship gives them the ability to dearest, to serve, and to forgive in ways that go beyond the limits of human resources. The new wine of the Holy Spirit far exceeds the water of human attempt.
Source: https://stpaulcenter.com/christian-marriage-and-divine-love/